


Brilliant Blondes

by SingingInTheRaiin



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Apologies, Awkward Conversations, F/F, F/M, Gen, Immortal Rose Tyler, are there really coincidences when there's a TARDIS on the case?, but still give each other crap, don't sue me for characterization, i haven't seen any of thirteen's episodes, real siblings will drop everything to travel the universe together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:33:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22578637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SingingInTheRaiin/pseuds/SingingInTheRaiin
Summary: Ryan loses track of the Doctor and the others on an alien planet, and then hurries after her when he spots her blonde hair. But when he gets closer, he discovers that he found an entirely different blonde.
Relationships: Metacrisis Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler, The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Rose Tyler, Thirteenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Comments: 16
Kudos: 278





	Brilliant Blondes

Ryan finished watching the strange approximation of a puppet show that had just been going on in the middle of the marketplace, and he turned around to see what Graham had thought of it. But Graham was not standing behind Ryan, and neither was Yaz or the Doctor. Had they gone off without him? He knew that he probably shouldn’t be too surprised at this point, but still, he was. Knowing the Doctor, something exciting had happened and she’d rushed off without thinking. 

Oh, wait, nevermind. Ryan could see her just on the other side of the market. It was easy to pick out his fellow travelers on this particular planet, because the natives here looked nothing like humans, with more arms, eyes, and ear stalk things than Ryan could even count, and there were hardly any visitors. So when he saw the flash of blonde hair turn a corner, he knew that it had to be the Doctor, which meant that Yaz and Graham were probably somewhere over there as well.

With his destination discovered, Ryan hurried as fast as he could to reach the Doctor. He didn’t bother calling out to her, since he knew that when she got distracted by something she thought was interesting, pretty much nothing would be able to tear her out of her thoughts. He just hoped that the Doctor would pause for a few seconds to give Ryan a chance to catch up.

He rounded the corner and found himself in a dingy looking alleyway, and there she was, crouched down and inspecting something that Ryan couldn’t see. It wasn’t until he started walking over to her that he hesitated. He didn’t see the other two humans around, and as he reached out to touch her shoulder, it occurred to Ryan that she wasn’t wearing her usual jacket. 

Just before he could touch her, the blonde suddenly whirled around, grabbing his arm tightly, and pinned him up against the opposite wall, with one arm pressed up against his neck. The side of his face was pressed to the bricks, and he took a moment to be grateful that they weren’t as rough as the bricks on Earth, before focusing on his attacker. 

Now that he could see her face, he could tell that she obviously wasn’t the Doctor, though she did appear to be human (though Ryan knew by now that there were many alien races that resembled humans). “Why are you following me?” She had a London accent, but it sounded like she was trying to hide it at least a little bit. 

Ryan gulped. “I just mistook you for someone else, honest! It was just a case of mistaken identity. You have the same hair as my friend!” Well, now that he was up close he could see the brown at the roots, but it was still the same style and mostly the same color as the Doctor’s. 

The woman (girl? Woman? It was hard to guess her age just by looking at her. Her eyes were kind of like the Doctor’s, where they seemed to hold an infinite amount of years in them, but her face looked very young) furrowed her eyebrows. “Pyruyi don’t have hair, so who is your friend?” 

“She’s called the Doctor, and we’re just-” He stopped mid sentence when the girl suddenly stepped back, and let him heave in a few long breaths. 

The girl crossed her arms over her chest as she gave Ryan an intense stare, like she was trying to read his mind or something. That was probably a thing that some people could do, right? “‘She?’ How- how long have you been traveling with the Doctor?”

There was a hint of desperation in her voice that hadn’t been there before, and Ryan cautiously peeled himself away from the wall. “Do you know her?”

For a moment, it seemed like the girl wasn’t going to answer, but then she let out a heavy sigh, and shrugged one shoulder. “You could say that. Though I didn’t exactly know the Doctor as whoever she is now that you know her. At least I know it’s her future, though, because none of the past Doctors were women. Huh. I believe you, though. You’re speaking English, and no one else around here does that.”

Ryan gave her a careful once-over, and even though his instincts told him that there was something dangerous about this woman, they also told him that she would not be a danger to the Doctor. She sounded so wistful when talking about her, even for a moment, and Ryan couldn’t help but want to be the hero of the situation. “Want to help me look for her? I think she’s wandered off again.”

The woman let out a startled laugh. “Yes, that part never changes, does it?” Then she bit her lip, and hesitated. “I don’t know if- I don’t think that it would be a good idea. We haven’t seen each other in a very long time, and I don’t think that she would want- she’s probably forgotten about me anyways. It was a really long time ago.”

Of course Ryan couldn’t force her to come with him, but he couldn’t help thinking that it would be a good thing. The Doctor preferred not to talk about her past when she could help it, so maybe it would be good for her to be forced to face at least a small part of it. And he could tell that this woman really wanted to see the Doctor, no matter what she said out loud. “Come on, this place is huge, and what if she’s gotten herself into some trouble and I can’t find her on time?” He didn’t mention that there were two other humans presumably with the Doctor at the moment. He told himself that it wasn’t relevant.

After a few very long seconds, she finally let out a sigh of defeat. “Alright. Just to make sure that you make your way back to her in one piece. What’s your name, anyways?”

“I’m Ryan.” He held out his hand, and gave her an expectant look. 

She looked at his hand like she’d never seen such a thing before, but Ryan refused to lower his hand, so he just continued to hold it out, even though he knew that it probably made him look like an idiot. Finally, she shook his hand, and gave him a soft smile. “Rose.”

As they started to walk back towards the last place Ryan had seen the others, he tried to think about why that name seemed so familiar. It was as they passed by a jewelry stand with flower shaped pendants that he suddenly remembered. The TARDIS was huge (infinite, if the Doctor was to be believed), and could make all kinds of rooms pretty much whenever anyone asked for them. 

But Ryan remembered the one and only time he’d ever seen a room with a wooden door. There had been a single rose carved into the doorframe, and the door had been locked. Ryan still wasn’t sure why he’d been allowed to see it at all, but now he had to wonder. Could that kind of thing possibly be a coincidence?

There would be time for questions later, though. For now, he was just focused on actually getting Rose and the Doctor to meet. He wasn’t sure why he’d become so focused on the idea, but he just felt like it was something that he really needed to do. 

They wandered around aimlessly for a few minutes, until there was the sound of a big explosion from somewhere off in the distance. Rose and Ryan both looked at each other and grinned, as they immediately knew it was the Doctor. Without having to say anything, they both took off running towards the noise. 

Everything after that seemed to happen rather quickly, and Ryan wished that he had the Doctor’s ability to think about a million different things at once. It would certainly be useful for understanding what was going on. There was a lot of yelling, and the Doctor set off a few more explosions, eventually causing a small cliff to collapse and tumble down, blocking off a waterway that had been just a few feet away from spilling over and flooding the entire town. 

Once that was dealt with, and they were all far away from the wrath of the angry Pyruyi who didn’t appreciate having one of their protected landmarks get destroyed, Ryan realized that Rose had slipped away at some point during all of the running. He swallowed down a strange sense of disappointment. He didn’t even know anything about her, or who she was to the Doctor, but he still felt like he’d somehow failed them both. 

The other three chatted and laughed as they headed back to the TARDIS, but Ryan just kept glancing around. They were in an area full of cliffs and caves and crags everywhere, and he couldn’t help feeling like someone was watching them. But if it was Rose, why wouldn’t she just come out and talk to them? Was she really that afraid to see the Doctor?

It turned out to not be Rose, though. A group of Pyruyi seemed to spill out of the rocks like ants out of an anthill, and they quickly surrounded the Doctor and co. With the amount of arms they had, it was easy for each of them to point several different dangerous looking weapons at the group.

The Doctor narrowed her eyes and put her hands on her hips. “Well what do you lot want? An apology? I’m sorry that I knocked over that cliff, but if I hadn’t, it would have only been a matter of hours before the town was underwater.”

The Pyruyi with the most arms moved closer, and motioned for the others to take a few steps back, but not lower their weapons. “Who do you think punctured the dam in the first place?”

The Doctor scowled, and got the same look she always did when she met people who intentionally tried to harm others. “Why would you do that?” 

Before the Pyruyi could answer, a different voice rang out, echoing slightly among all the rock faces around them. “Believe it or not, but it’s insurance fraud. Apparently a few hundred thousand deaths are an acceptable loss for the right price.”

Yaz scoffed, and opened her mouth to say something undoubtedly well-deserved by the Pyruyi, but she paused as she looked at the Doctor. Ryan tore his eyes away from the threats so that he could look too. She seemed frozen in place, eyes wide with shock as she stared off in the direction that the voice had come from. 

The leader of the Pyruyi whirled around, pointing his weapons in that direction too. “Show yourself now, before I smash you into pieces so tiny that I could eat you for a snack!” 

There was a pause where it felt like the whole planet was holding its breath, and then there was a bright flash of light, followed by all of the aggressive aliens collapsing to the ground. The Doctor knelt next to one and scanned it with her screwdriver before sitting back on her haunches. “Alive, just unconscious.” Then she slowly got to her feet, and stood in place as she waited for the approaching figure to get closer. 

Rose paused a few feet away, and Ryan grabbed an arm each from Yaz and Graham so that he could pull them away at least a little bit. Clearly Rose and the Doctor needed to talk on their own (though he wasn’t going to move far enough away that he wouldn’t be able to hear them, because he was sure that whatever they were going to say would be utterly fascinating). 

Rose cleared her throat. “You have a bad habit of always finding trouble, don’t you, Doctor?”

The Doctor seemed even more surprised to be called by her name than to see Rose. “You know who I am?”

“Course I do. You’re not the kind of person that is easily forgotten. Though it helps that Ryan over there told me he’s traveling with you.” She nodded towards Ryan, but the Doctor didn’t look away from Rose. “It’s, uh, it’s nice to see you. You look different.”

The Doctor gulped once before she managed to find her voice. “You look the exact same. You’re not wearing that blue jacket yet, so which one are you here with? I don’t remember coming here with you, but I probably made myself forget to avoid any messy situations.”

Rose took a tiny step forward, and the Doctor still didn’t move at all. “I’m not from your past. I’ve already been through all of it, Canary Wharf, dimension hopping, and your metacrisis.”

For some reason, that seemed to make the Doctor confused. “I suppose- I suppose once we got Gallifrey back, the walls between the universes must have become more malleable. Still, bang on job of finding me, and once again in the middle of an emergency. That seems to be our MO, doesn’t it?”

Rose shifted her gaze away from the Doctor, and wrapped her arms around her own waist. “I wasn’t looking for you.”

The Doctor looked hurt by that admission, but she quickly pushed it aside, just like she was always so good at doing. “It’s a mighty large universe. Bit of a coincidence that we’d run into each other here, huh? Are you- are you traveling by yourself?” She looked around like she expected another person to pop up out of nowhere.

To Ryan’s surprise, Rose shook her head. “Nah. I think we both know that going by yourself is just a recipe for disaster. It’s me, my TARDIS, and my- my brother.”

The Doctor looked relieved, and Ryan could see the confusion on the other two humans as well, but all of them remained silent so that they could listen and try to understand what was going on. “I know they say you’re not supposed to ask a lady certain questions, but how old are you, Rose?”

Rose shrugged. “Not as old as you.” She grinned, sticking her tongue between her teeth as she did so. “But not as young as I was.” Then she suddenly straightened her back. “You know, we’re being quite rude, Doctor. You haven’t introduced me to your friends.”

The Doctor blinked a few times, and then looked over at the humans like she was surprised they were there. “Oh- oh right! Rose, this is Yaz, Graham, and you said you already met Ryan? Fam, this is Rose. She’s my- she’s an old friend.”

Rose walked over to the humans, and held out her hand. “I’ve never seen the Doctor travel with so many people at once. At least not in the long term.” Her face fell, as did the Doctor’s, as they clearly both remembered something that they preferred not to. Then she turned back to the Doctor. “You’ve never met Tony, have you? You’ll love him. He’s brilliant, and he loves tinkering.”

“Where did you park?”

Rose nodded over her shoulder. “Right this way.” She walked in the same direction that the Doctor had parked her TARDIS, and then stopped when they were in front of the blue police box. “This really is a very large universe for coincidences, isn’t it?” she murmured. She reached out to press her hand flat against the wooden door, and closed her eyes as she breathed in. When she opened them again, Ryan almost thought he saw a flash of gold.

The Doctor looked around, and then back at Rose. “So you parked near here? We must’ve just missed each other.”

Rose laughed. “I’m just lucky you didn’t try to park right on top of me.” She walked a few feet away, and then pushed against one of the giant boulders that were lying around everywhere. A section of it swung inwards, revealing the inside of a TARDIS, though from what Ryan could see, it was decorated much differently than the Doctor’s. “My camoflauge never got jammed with a toaster pastry until it stopped working.”

The Doctor rolled her eyes and let out a soft huff. “So I’m supposing that he told you about that, then?” 

Instead of answering, Rose just reached out to grab the Doctor’s hand and pull her inside. Ryan wasn’t sure whether they were supposed to follow or not, but then Rose looked back at them. “Don’t you want to see what a TARDIS looks like when it isn’t ancient and banged up to hell and back?”

They all shuffled in. The console room was a bit smaller, but everything looked new and shiny, like polished wood. Rose spread her hands out as if to say ‘ta-da!’ Then she led them down a wide hallway and stopped in front of a closed door. She knocked gently, and Ryan heard a muffled, “Come in.”

Rose pushed the door open and stepped inside. The Doctor followed, with the others right behind, and Ryan looked around. It looked like a fancy hospital room, but with a lot more color in it, and there were shelves along the walls that were all lined with what had to be alien souvenirs. 

There was a large bed pushed up against one wall, and in it was an old man. She grinned when he saw Rose, and then looked at the visitors. “New friends, Rosie?”

Rose sat down in the cozy looking chair that was next to the bed, and reached out to take one of the old man’s hands and give it a soft pat. “Remember how I told you about how the Time Lord Doctor can do something called regeneration? Well this is the Doctor now.”

The Doctor waved awkwardly. “Hello, I’m the Doctor!”

The old man held out his hand. “Anthony Tyler. You can call me Tony.”

That seemed to surprise the Doctor (and Ryan wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her look surprised so many different times within the span of a single day), but she remembered her manners and shook his head. “It’s nice to meet you, Tony.”

“It’s strange, because I already knew a different version of you, isn’t it? Do you still have that same unstoppable gob?” There was a fond look on his face even as he said the words that should have been insulting.

The Doctor immediately scoffed. “Of course not!”

Graham snorted, but then held his hands up in surrender when the Doctor shot him a look. Rose chuckled as she leaned back in her seat. “We’ve been traveling together for a while now. How about you, Doctor? How long has it been since…?”

“I don’t know,” she said in a way that seemed to indicate she did know but just didn’t want to say. “Time really flies, doesn’t it?” 

There was so much tension in the room, and Tony seemed to realize it too. He looked at Rose and gave her a mock stern look. “Go get me some apple juice.” She rolled her eyes, but stood up and started towards the door with an assurance she’d be quick. As soon as she stepped out of the room, Tony looked directly at the Doctor. “Go help her.”

Instead of arguing that Rose was perfectly capable of getting a glass of juice on her own, or pointing out that the TARDIS could have probably just given him some juice, the Doctor nodded and stumbled out of the room, mumbling something that the humans didn’t quite catch.

Once she was gone as well, Tony gestured to the other seats in the room. “Please, sit down.” He looked at Graham first, and gave him a sympathetic smile. “All the running around isn’t too great on the joints, is it?”

Graham shook his head as he leaned back and kicked his legs out. “No, it really isn’t. But what else am I going to do?” 

Then the four of them chatted for a little while, mostly sharing stories about their various adventures. With all of time and space at their disposal, there were basically no crossover places. “Not even Earth?” Yaz ended up asking. “It seems like there’s trouble there every other week.”

Tony shrugged. “The Earth that’s here isn’t home. Not for me, anyways, and after being on the other side for so long, I doubt that it is for my sister either. We’re from a different universe, where things are just different enough to be noticeable. And even if she’d never admit it, I think Rose knew that the Doctor frequented Earth, and she wanted to avoid encountering- her.”

“Why?”

Tony sighed. “It’s a long and complicated story, and I don’t even know all of the details.”

Yaz glanced at the closed door to the room. “If it’s taken this long to get some juice, I’m sure it’ll take them a little longer still.” 

Without much more prodding, Tony told them a story about a shop girl who found a mad man with a box. He told them how she saved him in many different ways after he’d been through a lot of suffering, and she stayed with him even after he changed faces. But even though they loved each other, the Doctor always held her at bay because he was terrified of what it would do when he inevitably lost her, because even if she wanted to stay with him forever, she’d still only live a human life span while he kept on going. And then there was a tragedy where the girl was trapped in a different universe, and she fought like hell to make her way back to the Doctor, but even after she finally succeeded, he sent her away with a human copy of himself. What neither of them knew was that the girl had already been irrevocably altered by forces beyond either of their comprehension. Tony let out a sharp laugh at that part. “I know, it’s pretty easy to see who got the good genes of the family, considering she’s at least twenty years older than I am.” Then he continued on, sharing pretty much all of the details that he knew. 

Tony let out a heavy sigh as he reached the end of the story. “She married the human Doctor, and they had just a few decades together before he died, shot in the line of duty when they both worked for Torchwood as diplomatic agents. They had a TARDIS, but rarely used it because the human Doctor didn’t have a good enough time sense to make it worth the risk, but after he died, Rose took off on her own for an unknown amount of time before she returned and admitted that she couldn’t be by herself.

“By that point, both of our parents had passed on, and I was curious about the many adventures I’d heard the stories of growing up. So I volunteered to go with her, and we’ve been traveling together ever since.”

Ryan frowned as he tried to take that all in. “So why’d you come to this universe, then? If Rose didn’t actually want to see the Doctor?”

“Because it hurt more to stay behind in a place where she had so many memories with her Doctor.”

There was an uncomfortable silence in the room after that, and then it was blessedly broken up by Rose and the Doctor returning, both of them with slightly rumpled hair, and no juice in sight. “Well, it was great meeting you all,” Rose offered brightly. The Doctor tensed up. 

Ryan abruptly stood up, wincing when he knocked his chair back. “You mean after all that you’re not coming with us?”

Rose and the Doctor both looked down at the ground. “We knew each other for all of two years, no matter how life-changing those two years might have been. I’m old enough now to not drop everything important in my life just to run off and see the stars.” 

“That’s bullshit,” Tony bit out, straining to sit up properly. “You two belong together and you know it.”

“Tony-”

He continued on like his sister hadn’t said anything. “You are not going to use me as an excuse to keep yourself from being happy. I’m only human, and even with all the fancy life-saving technology in the universe, I know that I’ve only got a few years left, and then where will you be? All on your own again? You know that that’s rubbish. Even if she looks different now, she’s still the same person that you married, right?”

There was a stubborn clench to Rose’s jaw, and Ryan could see how Rose and the Doctor made a good match. “How can they be the same when she’s the one who-” she cut herself off, and pressed her lips together as she shook her head. 

The Doctor frowned. “The one who what?” Her voice was soft and gentle and undemanding.

Rose closed her eyes. “The one who left me behind.” 

Then the Doctor reached out to pull Rose into a hug, and Rose melted into it. Ryan felt like he was invading on a very private moment, while Yaz, Graham, and Tony all looked like they wanted to eat popcorn as they watched the show. “I’m sorry that I left you, but I thought that I was doing the right thing for you.”

“You’re not allowed to make those kinds of decisions for me, Doctor. I may not be nearly as old as you, but I have a lot of experience at this whole thing, and I know what I’m doing, and how to make my own choices. You sent me away from the Game Station, and you tried to send me away at Canary Wharf, and you left me after the stars were back. You keep doing all these things because you think you know what’s right for me, but you never just ask.”

After tears and apologies, the Doctor sent the humans back to her TARDIS so that she could talk with Rose in private for a little while, and they did. Yaz kept offering different suggestions about how she thought the private ‘talk’ was going, but none of them really had any good ideas about it.

A couple of hours passed, and Graham retreated to go to bed while Yaz went to do laps in the pool. Ryan made himself some tea in the mug with the extra big handle the TARDIS had made just for him, and he waited. Eventually the Doctor returned, and she wasn’t alone. Ryan grinned to himself. He was sure that there were still some small details that needed to be worked out, but Rose seemed like she was pretty good with the small details. He stayed in the kitchen to give them some more time together, and then slipped off to his room once he was finished with his tea. He had no idea what it would be like to travel around with even more people, but he couldn’t wait to find out. Not when he could hear how happy the Doctor sounded as she came onboard, happier than he’d ever heard her before. 

He thought that surely it couldn’t be a coincidence that they’d landed so close to Rose, and even though he couldn’t communicate with the TARDIS the way the Doctor could, Ryan was pretty sure that he felt a hum of agreement from the ship. Rose Tyler and the Doctor on the TARDIS, huh? Yeah, that sounded pretty good.


End file.
